


Perpetual Motion

by featherbow12



Series: Boys in Love [1]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Boys In Love, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24194482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/featherbow12/pseuds/featherbow12
Summary: When Arthur returns from the lake, he’s perpetually restless, plagued by the mountain of unused energy that built up within him over the centuries he was asleep. Sometimes Merlin can bring him peace and sometimes he can’t, but he loves Arthur fiercely through it all.
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Series: Boys in Love [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1850518
Comments: 8
Kudos: 169





	Perpetual Motion

It hums beneath his skin like a living, breathing beast—loose energy, restlessness, anxiety, buzzing and buzzing just beneath the surface until Arthur wishes nothing more than to rip off his skin just to feel it dissipate. He would do it, too, if he really thought it would stop his fingers from trembling with the need to just _do something_. But alas, he doubts it would be that simple.

“Arthur?” Merlin murmurs sleepily beside him.

The subconscious jittering of his feet pauses for just a second before resuming. He doesn’t want to disturb Merlin but everything is too calm if he stops, too still, and his resolve threatens to slip without some sort of outlet for the constant whirring in his limbs.

“Are you still awake, love?” Merlin cracks open one eye, then both, cataloguing the tension in Arthur’s shoulders and the ceaseless motion of his feet with the practiced eye of someone who knows exactly what it means.

Arthur looks away. He can’t bear to see the disappointment on Merlin’s face when he realizes it’s another one of _those nights_ , those nights when neither of them get a wink of sleep because Arthur can’t turn everything off long enough to even consider it and Merlin, stubborn bastard that he is, refuses to sleep when he can’t.

(Sometimes Arthur wonders if Merlin realizes what a gift he’s been given, this ability to close his eyes and clear his mind and succumb to the peaceful bliss of nothingness for even just a few hours, but he always stops short of ever voicing the thought because he knows that Merlin _does_ realize. And rather than abuse that gift for all it’s worth, the selfless wanker cites it as all the more reason to stay up with him)

“Go back to sleep,” he half-begs, voice gravelly with disuse, and is only a little shocked to remember these are the first words he’s spoken today. It happens, sometimes, the force of all the words he _wants_ to say blocking any of them from actually coming out, and not for the first time he marvels that Merlin didn’t even mention it.

He doesn’t deserve this man, but he wouldn’t survive a minute without him. It’s the truest thing Arthur knows.

“You’ve had a long week, you need to—“ he cuts off abruptly when Merlin’s fingers interlace with his, not tightening, not curling, but merely slotting themselves into the right gaps like an invitation.

It’s one he takes immediately, folding his hand into Merlin’s and _squeezing_ , doing his best to redirect its trembling into the feeling of Merlin’s skin beneath the pads of his fingers. His feet still shake at the other end of the bed, but even Merlin can’t work miracles. Not anymore.

“—you need to rest,” he manages to get out before his train of thought is lost amidst the onslaught of all the words jostling to claw their way out of his throat.

They tried just letting him talk, in the beginning, because it was as harmless an energy outlet as was available, even if his lips cracked dry and his voice grew hoarse in the process. But then the words that poured out stopped making any sense and Merlin gave him this look—not only scared, but _shattered_ , like he thought maybe Arthur was truly lost to him—and, well. That was the end of that.

“So do you,” Merlin says, sitting up. He looks almost ethereal like this, with the moonlight casting shadows across the planes of his face and highlighting his angled features just right. Merlin’s eyebrows furrow as he searches Arthur’s face, and Arthur does his best to keep it blank.

Merlin needs to sleep. He spent all week in the ER tending to patients, pulling one overtime shift after another because his coworker wanted to go on a honeymoon and that’s just the kind of man that he is. Merlin needs to sleep, and Arthur refuses to let his problems stand in the way.

Except—

Merlin has always been able to read him better than anyone else.

“Do you need me to—?” There’s really no name for what Merlin does, but if there was, Arthur thinks it would be _salvation._ “And don’t you dare lie to me, Arthur Pendragon.” Merlin’s voice is soft, but there’s steel behind it. “Let me help you.”

He can’t lie. Won’t, not even to save Merlin some sleep. That’s been their promise this time around— _no more lies—_ and sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps him going.

(Because he knows, whenever Merlin says _I love you_ , that it’s true, knows it somewhere deep in his bones far from the reach of fear or doubt, and where would he be without that?)

So he briefly toys with the idea of saying no and subjecting them both to another long, sleepless night trapped in the confines of insomnia, but ultimately Arthur reaches through the cloud of words and picks the one he needs.

“ _Yes_ ,” he whispers, and it’s a prayer, a plea, a desperate, foolish hope, but one he isn’t strong enough to deny himself.

Merlin smiles and presses a kiss to the arch of his wrist, to every knuckle, to the space between each finger, tracing Arthur’s hand with his lips until it lies still against the mattress, all energy drained. Every spot he touched tingles with a different kind of energy—the good kind, _Merlin’s_ , feather-light and familiar. “Let go, love,” Merlin says, breath ghosting against Arthur’s skin and leaving behind goosebumps, and he does.

Arthur closes his eyes and reaches deep within like Merlin taught him, visualizing every tendril of restless, squirming energy pulsing in his veins and _pushing_ it towards his hand. Curling his toes into the comforter, he wills his feet to stop shaking and _pulls_ , sucking every last drop of that buzzing beast into the crevices of his hand, from where Merlin draws it out of his system with soft touches and a flash of gold in his eyes.

Usually the outlet is his right hand, rough and calloused and always trembling just a little, the one Merlin holds when they walk down the street and grabs during the climax of a horror film and slaps when he tries to nick one too many cookies from Merlin’s weekly bake, the part of him that belongs so wholly to Merlin it’s the easiest thing in the world to surrender it to his magic.

(The first part of him that Merlin touched, when he emerged from the lake)

But sometimes the outlet Merlin chooses is a foot or an elbow or the back of his knee. It doesn’t really matter and it doesn’t always work, but when it does...for a few precious minutes there is a quiet in his mind and a peace beneath his skin, and he can simply lie here listening to the sound of Merlin breathing beside him.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur says quietly, even though he knows he doesn’t need to, because it deserves to be said. His fingers clutch at Merlin’s like a lifeline. “ _I’m so_ _sorry..._ ”

Because he also knows that every time Merlin drains the energy from Arthur into himself, the magic couched within it neutralizes an equivalent portion of Merlin’s own magic. Merlin won’t tell him exactly how much of his magic is dormant now, but Arthur knows it’s a significant portion—Merlin never uses magic for household chores anymore, never conjures little tricks just to make him smile.

He’s conserving what’s left for this, for _him_ , and Arthur hates that one day he’ll be the reason Merlin doesn’t have even a single drop left.

“C’mere you dollophead.” Merlin pulls his hand out of Arthur’s and instead snakes an arm around his shoulders, tugging gently.

Arthur acquiesces, loose-limbed and boneless like he hasn’t been in so long, until his head rests in Merlin’s lap. Once upon a time, when he bothered with things like politeness and pride, he might’ve seen this as improper or demeaning. They’re long past any of that now. A hand runs through his hair, gentle, and his eyes flutter closed as he leans into the touch.

“I know I’ve said this to you before—“

“It’s about time you realize I don’t listen to you,” Arthur mumbles back, because with the incessant clamoring of random words gone from the back of his throat, he doesn’t have to search for his own anymore. The ribbing, the jokes—it’s as natural as breathing.

“Then I’ll say it as many times as it takes you to hear it,” Merlin promises, and he sounds so earnest that it robs Arthur of every witty comeback at the tip of his tongue. “Magic doesn’t matter to me. I’m the last one left who has any, and what’s the point in that? Immortality doesn’t matter to me, because if there’s one thing I learned waiting for you, it’s that there’s nothing here worth staying for if you’re gone. You matter to me. You are _all_ that matters.”

Tears slide down his cheeks. Oh, how he loves this man.

“And if bringing you some peace means losing some of my magic, what a small price that is to pay. I get to trade something that doesn’t matter for the only thing that does, and I’ve never regretted it a single time.”

He lifts his head to see Merlin smile, a flash of white teeth in the dark, and finds himself returning it. There’s a bright, fuzzy sort of feeling in his chest like a flower unfurling or a firefly dancing that spreads all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes, leaving behind a warmth that sings of home.

“I love you,” he says, because now he can, because there’s nothing else trying to steal the breath needed for these words, because of course Merlin knows this but he deserves to hear it more often. “You stubborn, selfless idiot, you’re insufferable and I love you.”

Merlin laughs, the sound like liquid gold. “I’ve missed you, Arthur.”

He wants to promise that he’s here to stay, that he’ll never leave, but they both know that’s a lie. Some days it’s tolerable and some days the humming beneath his skin simply drowns out the rest of the world, even Merlin, leaving room for nothing but trembling and jittering and staring vacantly at the ceiling while the clock crawls toward morning in bright red digits.

_No more lies._

So he simply shifts to lay beside Merlin instead of on him, head propped up on one elbow, waiting as Merlin mirrors his position so their gazes can interlock, and savors this moment.


End file.
